I've put bones in this animal. There's an IK constraint at the tip of each toe. That's all. Why, when I lift the leg chain [I'm in the Left View] and try to shift it forward or back, does the chain twist in the air?

The joints are all Ball Joints, as per the Carrara tutorial. Should they be constrained to a specific axis?

Also, the movement of the leg seriously deforms the horns. This really surprised me. The head/torso/tail and all of both legs are one piece, done in the Vertex Modeler. But the horns are seperate and just grouped with the animal.

Any thoughts?

Bones can be applied to a group of objects (like deformers), that's why they deform the horns . So just parent them to the head bone and they shouldn't deform anymore . Later, you will have to set up skinning to avoid other strange deformations that may appear elsewhere on the model . And yes, you should set up more elaborate constraints to avoid the twisting problem . Also, manipulate the bones with care, they're very touchy ! I hope this helps, litst

Kelley, Joints, as a rule are notoriously tricky. When combined with bones, it can be a true nightmare. I've found that ball joints are hell with IK. Custom constraints, not so much but make sure that you have your ranges set up the way that you want and the rotation order in the right sequence, or you'll see your bones go crazy! BTW... never try to undo IK moves on joints. I've found it tends to screw up the initial positions of the bones. Another BTW.... REALLY COOl MODEL!!! Ken

I agree about the undo problem. I save often, but sometimes find myself in a bind when I'm setting-up the bones constraints. I use custom, and manipulate the bones by using the sliders within the constraint window. This way I can watch how each constraint affects the motion before I save again! (Wrestling with bones/constraits seems more difficult then wrestling this creature at times, but, once they are set, you can enjoy some REAL animatin'!) Good luck! Oh, and BYW, I agree... I'm looking forward to seeing this beastie walking around.

My, my! The things they don't tell you in the manual...and the "Spooky" tutorial worked out so well. Just when I thought that Bones was the answer to all my problems, I'm off on another roller-coaster learning curve!

litst: you say that bones can be applied to a group of objects...but in this case I can't see that they are. There are only four objects in this beast: two eyeballs, one set of horns...and all the rest. Head, body and legs are all one piece. I don't understand how moving the foot influences the horns.

As an experiment last night, I built a quick stick-man: head/torso/pelvis/two legs and feet...and installed bones in the torso and down both legs, with IK at each toe. Moving one toe dragged the other leg and foot around.

cckens: Yeah, I found out the hard way that you can't undo an IK constraint. In fact I'm wondering if I might be better off just setting up the constraints on how much a bone can move on which axis, then set up the walk cycle with the rotation cursor, forget about IK, and just duplicate the key frames in Sequencer?

Thanks for the advice and kind words on Beast.

Kelley, you could fix the horns deformation problem by defining the influence of the bones on them (know what i mean ? second tab of the Properties tray in the VM) . But that's not the way to go in your case, since the horns don't have to be influenced by any bone . Just detach the skeleton, ungroup everything and attach the skeleton to the body only . Then, parent the horns and the eyeballs to the bone of the head and it should work like a charm . BTW, i find that rotating bones one by one is much easier and less frustrating than setting up IKs with constraints, don't you think ? litst

Worse and worse: I went back to the Stick Man and re-boned just the lower portion. Note the results! With bones only in the lower body, the upper torso twisted, deformed, and the head went berserk. I was applying a Limited Constraint to move only on the X-axis at the Hip. Should I have started at the toe and worked up? I wondered if any of this might be due to the prescence of booleans? The two horns in Beast are a union. And in the Stick Man, I had joined a sphere and cylinder to form the hip/thigh.

I built a new Stick Man. [Not shown, but no booleans] The upper body problem went away, but the leg continued to deform when I rotated the hip bone on the X-axis. [No constraints of any kind applied] Again, I'm suddenly wondering if I should have started at the toe? Notice how the leg deforms depending on whether it's being swung forward or back. Same kept happening in Stick Man#2.

Do I need to adjust 'influences'? I'm hazy about why they exist from what I see in the manual. The default seems to be what I'm aiming for. Except that it's not happening.

Back to you guys!

Yes, this is typically the kind of deformations than must be fixed by setting up influences . But you must do this on a model that is fully boned ! BTW, if you add a bone going from the hip to the head to your stick man, you should notice less deformation, or even not at all . So, i'd suggest to set your bones right first, and then we can talk about influences, depending on the problems you'll have then . Oh, and no this doesn't come from booleans, at least i doubt it .

A footnote to the last post: tried to do a single cylinder as shown in the manual. Installed a Root Bone and three below it. Selected the Root Bone in the Left View and rotated it. The whole cylinder followed smoothly. Undid it, and selected the bottom bone: #3. Assigned a "None" for a constraint. Went up one to #2. Assigned a "Custom/Limited" constraint. When I move the slider button toward either of its limits on the ring, this happens. [note the deformation at the bottom]

I'm thinking that whatever I'm doing wrong is at a very fundamental level.

litst: your last post came in just as I was uploading the 'footnote'. I'll finish the Stick Man off into a more complete figure/skeleton, and we'll see what we see. It's encouraging to know that booleans probably aren't the cause, since I do find them convenient.

Hum, about the cylinder ... the example in the manual is not a simple cylinder, it has some extra vertices . Confusing, ain't it ? :-/

Extra vertices!! Cute. I think I'd like to find the person who wrote the manual and threaten to break his typing hand. Suddenly, 'influences' on which vertices is beginning to make more sense.

Moving right along then: here's my fully boned Stick Man #2. SM2 is just a collection of primitives. Before I jump in and make a total cock-up of it, please give me some pointers on how to proceed.

I really appreciate all the help I've been getting here.

Is this all done as one vertex object? if so, it can be easier to adjust the bones influence in one way and harder in another. ;> (Sorry!) If it's all in one window it's easier to see what your affecting, but if they are separate primitives grouped together then it's easier to quickly de-influence sections. If a vertex is attached to multiple bones, then it can deform like in your earlier problems. Of course, being influenced by multiple bones is what makes it deform clean... when set-up! So, all this influence editng is done on a vertex level. Go into the vertex editing room, and then select one of the vertexes that is giving you a problem. The second button in the properties tray will list which bones are influencing that vertex, and what percentage each one is influencing it. This list will ALWAYS add up to 100%. (Kinda makes sense... yes?) If there is a bone called, "L_Thigh" then it shouldn't be influencing any of the head vertices. (You DID name the bones appropriatly... yes?) Play around with these settings on your model AFTER your bones are all set-up with their constraints and attached to your model. Hope this didn't make things worst for you! Good luck! :>

Hi yo. I've been running into similar weirdnesses. I've also been experiementing with stick figures in order to learn about bones. And setting up the influences is definitely the key. Above is my stick-figure version of Death (best not to ask). I ran into similar problems with the edges of his robe doing stupid things when I moved the fingers or hand. I think now what I should have done is made the polygons on the edges of the robe influenced by the elbows 100%. I will try that tonight and see what happens. Death, by the way, is two vertex objects -- the bones and the robe, which I have attached to the same skeleton. Don't know if this is the right approach or not, but it made the texturing easy.

Oh, forgot to mention... the skeleton is the same skeleton I use for my standard stick guy, similar to what kelley has above. I was curious to see how the robe would deal with leg bone movements. I'll try to post the results fo that experiment tonight, too.

twillis? Any results back I was looking forward to seeing what happened. Brian

Oh, man, I completely forgot. Sorry about that. But it seems to have worked OK. Not perfectly, but very useable. Also, I am purposely using low-polygon count characters, and I supect that higher counts would lead better results. I will TRY to remember to post some posed pics tonight.

Forgot to mention: Setting the polygons on the edges of the robe arms up so that they were influenced 100% by the Elbow bones worked great: I can move the hands with out the robe doing funky stuff. I didn't mess with the rest of the vertex settings.

OK, this pic is just a front view showing my basic bone setup.

And this is a render of after I've changed the rotation angles of some of the joints.

Looks decent...now cough up the animation;)

Did you IK the bones, or just work with rotations? How about constraints?

Nicholas86-- Animation? What, a still of Death doing his James Brown impression ain't enough for you? Well, let me finish his scythe at least. bluetone-- I didn't IK the bones, I just played with the rotations. I didn't set the constraints, partly because of laziness, and partly because I like to type in some of my angles, and that warning message that comes up when you have restraints set BUGS me.

Uh, that should have been "constraints set", not "restraints set". Freudian slip, no doubt.

Uh huh... 'restraints set' is for RenderErotica.com! ;> So, if he's doing his James Brown imitation, doesn't that mean he needs a microphone, and some scatilly clad background singers?

Maybe it's just karaoke night.

Cute twillis, cute...lol...taps foot where is the animation.....taps foot again impatiently

"I sing bad!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "You knew that I would!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "I sinnnng bad!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "I knew that I should!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "So bad!" (da, da) "So sad!" (da, da) "I need beer!" (duh, duh, duh, da...)"OWWH!" (do, do-do, do-do-do douou, do, do-do, do-do-do-dooo...) "When I don't know... the WOOORDS! I just sing them off key! And, when I don't... see the scree-een! I just sing louder off key!" "I feeeel drunk!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "I smell like a skunk!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "I feee-eeeel drunk!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "I'll probably sleep in my trunk!" (da-da, da-da, da-da, da) "The room spins!" (da, da) "No one wins!" (da, da) "I'm gonna fall!" (duh, duh, duh, CRASH!) "OWWH!"

OK, here's the animation for the above, um, music. Sorry, quick and dirty rendering with weird shadows because I suck at lighting. And remember, I'm using very few polygons (less than 500 total). But I hope it'll give you some ideas of the possibilities.

Nifty..good job...about time;)

What is interesting to me is the robe behavior around the legs. Remember, there are no legs to the vertex model, I just attached a set of bones that did have legs. The automatic treatment of the between-the-legs polygons is interesting. Although not perfect, it does create the illusion that the dude has legs under his robe. I really didn't expect that, and it was a neat surprise. I suspect that this effect could be improved by adjusting the vertices influences. Maybe increasing the influence of the hip bones slightly. Of course, for my purposes, he's good enough as is. But it's something you Realism Monsters might want to think about. Besides things like robes and skirts, it could make things like webbed fingers easier to do. HA! My turn to give YOU homework!

Nice animation. But am I seeing a deep shadow in the gown when the legs part, or is the model developing a rip? It seems that I'm looking in to the back side of the gown.

Hmmm. I had assumed it was a deep shadow, but perhaps it is a rip. I'll try re-rendering against a different color background, and see if I can tell which it is.

Yeah...I just assumed it was a rip, or perhaps some major face shifting since you had a low poly model. Tell us what happens;) HOMEWORK FOR YOU!!! lol. I'll get some stuff up...gimmie some time;)